HIMYM's Christmas Episodes: The Final Verdict on the Best and the Worst
Over nine seasons, How I Met Your Mother featured seven Christmas episodes (counting both parts of a two-parter). But how do they stack up against each other?
All of the episodes have high IMDb ratings but still, some were received better than the others. Let's look at the episodes from best to worst.
The title of the best one goes certainly to The Final Page: Part Two (S8 E12, 9.4 on IMDb), the episode where Barney reveals the elaborate, manipulative and borderline insane plan he cooked up for the sake of asking Robin to marry him, with Christmas serving as the backdrop for the high point of their romance (and the low point for poor Ted).
For many fans this episode cemented their love for the Barney + Robin pairing. Reactions recorded in fan reviews can be summarized as "…the best proposal I can think of on TV" and "This changed everything".
Then there goes a number of Christmas episodes ranging from "good, but not as good as S8 E12" to "it was good, but nothing special":
- Symphony Of Illumination (S7 E12, 8.7 on IMDb)
- The Final Page: Part One (S8 E11, 8.4 on IMDb)
- False Positive (S6 E12, 8.1 on IMDb)
- How Lily Stole Christmas (S2 E11, 8.0 on IMDb)
- Little Minnesota (S4 E11, 8.0 on IMDb)
The worst-rated Christmas How I Met Your Mother episode, The Over-Correction (S8 E10) was still received pretty well, getting 7.9 on IMDb and attesting to the high quality of the show.
The Over-Correction is set immediately before The Final Page One and Two, so both the best and the worst Christmas episodes of the series are dedicated to the same Christmas holiday period.
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The episode's premise is Robin trying to steal Barney's playbook from the latter's apartment ostensibly to show her co-worker, Patrice, whom Barney is now dating, that he is an unscrupulous ladykiller, but secretly driven by jealousy.
Then she gets trapped when Barney suddenly returns. Then her attempt to call for help and some sheer coincidences result in pretty much the entire main cast trying to remain hidden from Barney in the same suite of rooms. As you can guess, hilarity ensues.
But as it seems, while the episode was not terrible, most viewers and reviewers found it too reliant on its farcical setup, at the expense of proper emotional build-up to the climax which occurred two episodes later.
"For the big episode concept (Trapped In The Closets) to work, she [Robin] has to be simplified. And that goes against everything this season has worked so hard to craft." (via)